Renisa Mawani, "Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire" (Duke UP, 2018)
About this episode
Renisa Mawani discusses her book on the Komagata Maru and its implications for understanding colonial legal history and migration.
In 1914 the British-built and Japanese-owned steamship Komagata Maru left Hong Kong for Vancouver carrying 376 Punjabi migrants. Chartered by railway contractor and purported rubber planter Gurdit Singh, the ship and its passengers were denied entry into Canada and two months later were deported to Calcutta. In Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018) Renisa Mawani retells this well-known story of the Komagata Maru. Drawing on "oceans as method"—a mode of thinking and writing that repositions land and sea—Mawani examines the historical and conceptual stakes of situating histories of Indian migration within maritime worlds. Through close readings of the ship, the manifest, the trial, and the anticolonial writings of Singh and others, Mawani argues that the Komagata Maru's landing raised urgent questions regarding the jurisdictional tensions between the common law and admiralty law, and, ultimately, the legal status of the sea. By following the movements of a single ship and bringing oceans into sharper view, Mawani traces British imperial power through racial, temporal, and legal contests and offers…
More episodes of New Books in South Asian Studies
- Caste as a Material Question with Rahul Sonpimple
- Ute Hüsken and Suganya Anandakichenin eds., "Pathika: Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions" (HAS, 2026)
- Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)
- Vignesh Rajahmani, "The Dravidian Pathway: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Politics of Transition in South India" (Hurst Publishers, 2025)
- Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
- Pratap Kumar Penumala and Arvind Sharma, "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hindu Ethics" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the New Books in South Asian Studies podcast page.